The Creative Arts Committee of Oak Bluffs is now featuring a well rounded cultural and social program for all school-age children in the Tivoli Building.
Through the help of specialists vacationing on Island, the following program is available for young members:
Swimming lessons twice a week under the able tutorship of Mrs. Madelon Stent, educational instructor at Columbia University; Mrs. Connie Koefoed, New York city Board of Education instructor; and Bill Julian, well known sportsman from New York.
The first introduction of Methodism on this island was subsequent to the Revolutionary war. The Baptists then had a flourishing society, chiefly consisting of residents of Tisbury, but numbering some from other towns on the island. The Congregationalists were here from the earliest settlement, and were often spoken of as “the standing order.”
We were always stared at. Whenever we went outside the neighborhood that knew us, we were inspected like specimens under glass. My mother prepared us. As she marched us down our front stairs, she would say what our smiles were on tiptoe to hear, “Come on, children, let’s go out and drive the white folks crazy.”
The Selectmen of this town have granted a license to Mr. Peter West to plant, grow and dig oysters, in a certain part of Squash Meadow Pond, for 20 years. We are glad to hear this. The oysters grown on this Island are of a very superior quality, and we should not be surprised to learn of the complete success of the new enterprise.
The proposed revival of a roller skating rink in Oak Bluffs calls to mind the grandeur of the one that occupied a place of honor in that town from 1878 to 1892.
Roller skating became a craze in the early 1870’s, and the first roller rink in the country was built in Worcester by a wealthy promoter named Samuel Winslow who had invented a new and improved type of skate, in 1876. The idea caught on with great speed, and by the time the rink at Oak Bluffs was completed, just about every able-bodied individual in the country was swooping around on roller skates.
Repairs are under way this fall at the East Chop Lighthouse, the historic cast-iron tower that sits on Telegraph Hill, its beacon flashing green-green-green to guide mariners on their way around the chop.
A spectacular blaze, the cause of which is not definitely determined, destroyed the freight she and outer end of the Oak Bluffs steamboat wharf late Wednesday afternoon, involving a loss of property owned by Vincent’s Fish Market, on the dock property, the value of which was set at $30,000 and a loss to the Steamship Authority, covered by insurance, not yet even approximated. The fish market equipment was uninsured, according to David Vincent, the proprietor.
